After introducing Heather and Kyle to Northern Thailand and then exploring Angkor Wat with them, we all were ready for some tropical beach time, so we jetted off to Railay, a peninsula that juts out into the Andaman Sea, to see if we could find the picturesque beauty that Thailand's coasts are reputed to be. So, we packed our bags, caught a tuk-tuk to the airport, and headed back into Thailand.
Railay proved to be pretty spectacular! We had to literally wade out into the surf (with our bags hoisted above our heads!) to get to our long-tail boat that took us to the Railay peninsula. There are no roads that connect Railay to the other towns and cities in the area, so the only way to access it is by boat.
Our first day, we did some kayaking and swimming in the beautiful water, and enjoyed laying by the hotel pool.
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| Blurry - but it shows that all four of us went out! |
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| A "sea cave" that we found. |
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| Our almost-beach-side bungalows. |
We also booked a "Seven Island Tour" for the next day, which would allow us to get out and see some more of the area. In theory, this was a great idea! In practice, however, Dani had enjoyed the sunshine of the prior day a little too much (and thus was quite crispy), and everyone had not been scrupulous enough about inspecting our ice at dinner, so during our "Seven Island Tour" we all were experiencing various levels of stomach un-ease (to put it lightly).
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| A monkey we spotted on one of the islands. |
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| Island #1: Dani: avoiding the sun. Gabe: just about to throw up. |
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Island #7: Our final stop where Kyle lost his stomach contents and none of us ate much of the BBQ dinner.
But the sunset was pretty! |
The rest of our time on Railay was spent either being miserable or trying to recover from being miserable for all four of us, but we did get a lot of Qwirkle games in with Heather and Kyle!
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| The panorama of the beach at Railay. |
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Qwirkle!
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We had planned to head West to Phuket in order to catch our flight North to Bangkok for the final few days with Heather and Kyle, but we'd booked a night at a "remote" island resort for a nice rest spot along the way. The resort didn't disappoint, with quiet little cabins in the woods and a beautiful infinity pool!
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| Watching a storm roll in from the infinity pool. |
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| Our porch/reading nook. |
We made it back to Bangkok and were feeling recovered enough to enjoy a day riding on the public transport through the canals. It was very cool to go "behind the scenes" of the city, so to speak, and view life of the everyday Bangkokian from a "backyard" view. We also saw some frighteningly large lizards which we researched later and found out they are not, in fact, komodo dragons as our boat captain seemed to be indicating, but are a relative of them called Water Monitors.
We said our goodbyes to Heather and Kyle the next day and caught an overnight bus back to Chiang Mai. We realized when we got to the bus station at 2AM that we'd lost our ticket to pick up our scooter from the long-term parking where we'd left it, so 3AM found us wandering up and down the hundreds, if not thousands, of scooters parked in the lot looking for our bike since neither of us had memorized the license plate. We eventually found it, the lot security guard gave us a jump as our battery was dead, and we made it home before sunrise to rest up and prepare for the next stretch of school!
